Void
by mattmetzger
Summary: The destruction of Vulcan has shattered its people, their logic drowned in their pain and grief. It is now up to the crew of the Enterprise to stop their own Vulcan being washed away in the same rip tide.
1. In Space

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

**

* * *

**

**In Space...**

Three weeks into their first mission, McCoy approached Jim with his serious face on, and the new Captain knew that this was not one of those discussions involving levity and smiles. No, he'd seen that expression before, and it never carried good news.

"Something on your mind, Doctor?" he asked, and the title conveyed his understanding to his best friend. Right then, they were not best friends. Right then, they were officers on a starship, and there was clearly something more pressing at hand than their feelings.

"It's that First Officer of yours."

Jim really didn't want to hear this. He'd heard it from Uhura, and from Chekov, and even from Scotty the odd time or two. Heard it left, right and centre.

"Look, I know we don't..."

"It's nothing to do with you," McCoy interrupted, and Jim blinked. "I don't give a damn whether you like him or not, Jim, but this isn't about your relationship - personal or professional. That's nothing to do with it."

"Then what's going on?" Jim demanded.

McCoy sighed, and shrugged. "I normally couldn't tell you this, Jim, but...I feel that I have to."

"Tell me what?"

"The doctor/patient confidentiality agreement is only to be ditched if I think that his life is in danger, or a complete court-martial forces me to hand over the information I have."

Jim felt cold, all of a sudden. There was most definitely no court martial - and if there was, it would be him, the mutineer, under the microscope. Not Spock. Not their perfect, _distinguished _Vulcan graduate.

"Explain," he said, and he sounded rather Vulcan himself in that moment.

McCoy slid the PADD over the desk between them. "Starfleet Medical has been shuttling all available information on Vulcan medicine to every medical professional in the Fleet. Half the doctors are on New Vulcan as it is, trying to stop the species from going under."

"They're ill?"

McCoy snorted. "You could say that, Jim."

He swallowed. "And Spock...?"

"Is even worse off than the rest of them," he muttered.

Jim thought back. Spock was just...Spock. There'd not been anything noticeably wrong with him, not really. Nothing, that is, that he could pick up on - but then, he hardly paid attention in xenobiology. Xenolinguistics, sure, but not xenobiology.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked, still not picking up the PADD.

"The man lost his entire planet, most of his species, and his mother in roughly the space of ten seconds," McCoy said shortly. "What in the seven hells do you _think _is wrong with him?"

He broke off, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment, but continued before Jim could speak.

"They're all going under, every last one of the green-blooded hobgoblins. They're in pain, Jim, pain so immense we can't even begin to imagine. You must know they're telepathic?"

Jim nodded.

"Well, they _felt it_. They felt their own families die. In many cases, they've lost husbands and wives, parents, even their own children. Logical or not, they're not heartless, and they're in agony. All those telepathic bonds they set up with their loved ones have snapped instantaneously, and the survivors can't cope with the pain."

Jim swallowed, his mouth dry.

"I'm exchanging information with a Dr. M'Benga on New Vulcan. He's sent me images, videos...it's horrible, Jim. They're in literal pain. Screaming, crying, begging for anything to stop it. It makes Spock's loss of temper on the bridge look like my Jo throwing a tantrum. I've never even heard of a Vulcan screaming before."

"I didn't even know they could cry."

"They _can't_," McCoy said sharply. "No tear ducts, Jim. It's not tears, it's blood. They're hurting themselves, clawing at their own faces and heads to try and replace the psychic shock with physical pain."

Jim shuddered at the mental image.

"There've been suicides."

Jim jolted in his seat like he'd been electrocuted, and McCoy nodded grimly. Both their throats are tight now, and Jim resolutely refuses to touch the PADD lying between them, but they both know that it needs to be said.

"I got the reports this morning. Eight suicides last night, and five more during the course of today. They're in so much pain, they're killing themselves to make it stop."

"Deliberately, or...?"

"I don't know. M'Benga said he was sure that two or three of them were deliberate, but he's not convinced about the others. They're delirious with the pain, sometimes, so it wouldn't be a stretch to suggest it's accidental. But, Jim, they're _Vulcans_. Until now...M'Benga made enquiries. The High Command told him there hasn't been a suicide on Vulcan for over a thousand years."

"But...they're not on Vulcan anymore."

"Exactly."

Jim shuddered, and forced his mind back to the reason they were having the conversation in the first place. "And...and Spock?"

McCoy sucked in a breath, and released it slowly. "He...came to me the first evening out of dock. Requested painkillers."

Jim swallowed.

"I got a pain reading off the biobeds. Jim, I don't know how in the hell he walked into my sickbay that night. If that were you or me, we'd be in the foetal position on the floor, screaming until our lungs gave out. I've had him on high dose of kelaromol - best damn painkillers for Vulcans on the market - but I can't erase the pain without putting him in a coma."

Jim shivered.

"I can't even keep him on the kelaromol that long, Jim. The problem with Vulcans is their metabolism processes drugs too quickly to be effective, but too slowly just to give them a higher dose. I can't keep him medicated enough to keep the pain at bay, not really."

"So...what do we do?" Jim breathed.

"I don't know, Jim," McCoy said grimly. "I don't know how to even begin dealing with this. The man's a wreck - physically, psychically, emotionally, mentally, whatever. He's been ripped up, turned inside out, and stuffed in a goddamn sewing machine to put him back together. The last time I saw pain readings that high, it was in medical school in a holographic scenario, and the patient had just had both legs torn off by faulty machinery."

Jim flinched and shook his head. "Jesus, Bones..."

"I need help on this one, Jim," McCoy said. "He's not fully Vulcan, you know that."

"Then maybe..."

"It's going to be worse," the doctor interrupted. "It's going to be much, much worse. He can't control himself to the same weird extent other Vulcans can. He snapped first - not one of the Vulcans we rescued let it sink in before we reached Earth. He went first."

"I provoked him."

"You did," McCoy agreed. "But he was under control again very fast afterwards. Too fast. He's veering between extremes, his body is pumping him full of adrenalin to try and keep him from going under, and his brain doesn't even know where to start dealing with the pain. He's got all the emotional turmoil of a human, magnified a thousand times, with the depth and telepathic severity of a Vulcan. And unlike the other Vulcans that got out, he _watched _her die. He saw her fall, not just felt it."

Jim shivered. The look on Spock's face when he had returned to the ship...he remembered that look, and desperately wished that he hadn't.

"The human parts of him don't understand where this pain is coming from. The Vulcan parts don't have the support of the human parts to stop it getting worse."

"What are you saying, Bones?" Jim whispered, his voice cracked in the hushed quiet of his ready room.

"I'm saying," McCoy says, voice quiet and dangerous, "that unless I can do something, and I'm fairly sure that I can't, he's either going to go mad, or die. And I honestly couldn't tell you which."

* * *

Nyota and Spock had been 'intimately acquainted' for some fourteen months before the emergency situation with Vulcan, and in that time, Nyota became very familiar with the nuances of Vulcan speech, body language and moods. She knew better than any other cadet exactly how deep the Vulcan emotional waters ran, but also how difficult they could be to stir.

She had not actually learned Vulcan or Romulan due to Spock. She had begun her lessons in them due to her ease with the harsher languages like Klingon, Vulcan and Romulan. She was at ease with the harsh tones, the glottal stops, and the rasping quality to those three languages, and had been gaining proficiency long before she met Spock.

When she had, it had merely strengthened a resolve that already existed.

They had started out as friends. She had not, in the beginning, been attracted to him. Nyota was not the kind of woman to lose her head over a man, even one as stunning as the young Vulcan had admittedly been. No, the beginning had been merely social. Nyota's love of languages was at odds with most of the cadets she hung around with, being navigating or engineering nuts. And Spock had been all too happy to meet with her in campus cafés to discuss Vulcan, Romulan and Human literature.

Over that first year, Nyota had noticed her own disturbing tendency to flush whenever Spock offered her a (very Vulcan) compliment, or the nervous jitters she began to develop immediately prior to their meetings. And though she was not the kind of woman to lose her head over a man, she also wasn't stupid, nor in the habit of lying to herself.

She talked Spock into a date in the summer before her final year.

To her surprise, he had offered no logical arguments either way. He had merely agreed, with that small relaxation in the contours of his mouth that indicated a smile.

For fourteen months, they had been 'an item', in the words of campus gossipers across the Academy. Although, due to her final-year timetable and his teaching commitments, they rarely saw each other more than once a week, it had been a stable and ultimately satisfying relationship. And Nyota had never been one to bandy the words around, but she was fairly sure that she was in love with that stoic, beautiful Vulcan man.

And then his world had been destroyed.

Literally.

He had shattered there, she had seen it. Due to the telepathy, it might not be exaggeration to claim that part of him died with Vulcan and his mother, but Nyota preferred to pretend that it hadn't. He was not broken, merely...in need of fixing.

And she was not one to back down from a challenge, or from helping the ones that she loved, but Nyota was terrified. It was quite one thing, to acknowledge that, in theory, Vulcans (being emotional beings after all) could fall prey to the same psychological hiccups as humans. It was quite another to be _here_.

Here was the dark warmth of his quarters, where Nyota had come to hate hyposprays. She knew Spock had been to the CMO twice already for painkillers, and watching him shivering and hissing in bed like a wounded man made her hate medicine for having nothing better to offer.

"It's alright," she soothed, pressing the hypospray to his neck and praying that this dose would finally, _finally _bring at least a piece of the peace he sought.

"Nyota..." he breathed, through clenched teeth and a tense face. His eyes were closed, and he was trembling with the effort to not simply sink under the agony and drown.

"I'm here," she whispered, stroking her fingers lightly over his cheeks and hair, trying to soothe what she couldn't help. She couldn't do anything about this, and never would be able to. She was psi-null; there was no help from her. She could do nothing but uselessly soothe and provide the medication when he was too exhausted, too weak, to be able to reach for it himself.

"I...I..."

"Ssh," she murmured, setting the hypo aside, and settling in for another night trying to get him to sleep for more than ten minutes at a time. "Ssh, it's alright. It's alright."

It wasn't alright.

**...no one can hear you scream.**


	2. Look Into The Void

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

**

* * *

**

**Look into the void...**

Jim didn't know what to do.

Jim was unfamiliar with that sensation - he always knew what to do when something went wrong. Sure, sometimes he was doing it by the seat of his pants, but he at least had some clue of where to go from where he was.

Not this time.

He wasn't used to aliens, yet, and Vulcans even less. Nobody had thought to give him pointers on how to interact with ordinary Vulcans, never mind ones like Spock. He could trip over a whole goddamn minefield of issues with Spock, like a) his mother, b) his half-human heritage, c) his emotional control, d) his relationship with Uhura, or e) the loss of most of his species. There were a fair few things in there that _wouldn't _be issues with other Vulcans.

And hell, Jim was clueless on how to really talk to Spock anyway, never mind when there was something wrong with him. Talking to Spock when there was absolutely nothing wrong with the man was difficult enough. _Now_, in light of McCoy's concerns...

Jesus, Jim wasn't cut out for this.

Vulcans didn't even have, to his knowledge, any typical social or cultural methods of consoling or comforting each other. They didn't let each other _know _there was pain - and Jim _knew _they could be in pain and grieve. He wasn't an idiot. But even if they _did _have rituals for it, he was pretty sure (Vulcans being such a private sort of people) that those overtures would be quite unwelcome coming from him. Possibly even inappropriate.

And the worst part of the whole thing?

_He would never have guessed._

Spock didn't _look _like he was practically doped six ways to Sunday when he turned up for duty. He didn't even look like he was in mild pain, never mind pushed to the extremes that McCoy described. Part of Jim - the very human, not-allowed-out-in-public-because-it's-_nasty _side of him - muttered that he obviously wasn't as bad off as McCoy said he was.

Then he remembered the feel of those hands around his throat, and wondered whether he would be able to tell at all before he snapped. And from what McCoy said, if Spock snapped _now_, they could very well lose him.

Jim didn't really mesh with the guy, and he had trouble getting along with him at the best of times, but he didn't want to lose him either.

But he didn't know what to do to stop that happening.

For the first time since he was a kid, Jim felt...pretty much helpless.

* * *

McCoy didn't even hesitate when Spock entered the sickbay that afternoon, immediately passing off his current patient (genius-level kids, every last one of them, and they still managed to cut themselves cleaning up shattered glass. No wonder the medical profession was full of alcoholics!) to one of the junior doctors and steering the Vulcan towards his office.

His sound-proofed, windowless, door-with-a-lock office.

"Sit down," he said, pulling up Spock's file on his console and frowning at it. "You're not through that batch of painkillers already?"

"I am," Spock confirmed, and McCoy hissed.

"Jesus," he muttered, shaking his head. "I can't possibly give you any more than I already have. We could switch to some heavy-duty human medications but I doubt they'd touch the Vulcan brain. They'd do you just fine for a broken leg, but psychic shock...not so much."

He glanced apologetically at the First Officer. His face was like stone, but there was a fine tremor apparent in his fingertips, where they rested on the desk between them, and he was sheet-white. He looked haggard, almost, as if he hadn't been sleeping. Which McCoy wouldn't be at all surprised about.

"Spock, I know you're trying the Vulcan way of coping, but have you thought about giving the human way a try?" he ventured. "You can't neglect your human half through all of this."

"It is not my human half that provides the problem."

That much was true. "But the emotional impact won't be lost on it," McCoy prodded. "We usually find it helps to talk it out with others, to seek company..."

"I cannot...talk about it, Doctor."

McCoy raised an eyebrow, caught himself, and lowered it. "Why not?"

"I believe," Spock actually hesitated, and McCoy swallowed. "I believe that even humans make note of the dangers of reaccessing the memory of a trauma when it is...too fresh. Even humans require...distance at such times."

"You're saying that if you try and work through the emotional feedback now, while it's still happening, then...?" McCoy prompted.

"The combination of the psychic trauma of...the broken bonds and the emotional trauma of the event itself would combine," Spock said, his voice dropping in volume the longer that he spoke. "The combination would likely result in a physical shutdown."

"Your brain wouldn't be able to cope," McCoy muttered, and nodded. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Your telepathy's really not helping right now."

"The damage is...physical, as much as it is telepathic."

McCoy knew that. He'd taken scans - there were pockets of inflammation running over Spock's cerebral cortex, and dark blotches indicating minor aneurysms. Vulcans did not react to very minor aneurysms as humans did - they were not uncommon, they did not cause the same pain response, and the Vulcan neurological system was evolved to deal with them. But _so many _shadows was still concerning, and he wanted to avoid more at all costs.

"Those aneurysms. You haven't had any more?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Believe me, you'd notice," McCoy grumbled. "Would shutting down your telepathic centres help at all? Stop you reaching out for those bonds, so to speak?"

"Negative," and Spock actually shivered at the prospect. "It is likely, in the confusion, that my mind would decide that the remaining bonds I have were also destroyed."

McCoy flinched. Last damn thing they needed.

"Right," he said, and swallowed. "Christ, Spock, I'll be honest with you here. I have no idea how to help you. I can't keep medicating you until the pain stops, because the amount you'd need would destroy your liver and kidneys. Hell, it would probably cause more brain damage. I don't know what to do."

Spock bowed his head, and rose from the chair without his usual grace.

"Spock," McCoy called as he turned for the door. "We'll find something. We'll get you through this. I swear to God, we'll get you through this."

Spock said nothing.

* * *

Nyota was waiting for him outside his quarters when Spock came off-duty some hours later. She offered him that sad smile that had seemingly replaced her bright demeanour, and embraced him the moment that the doors hissed shut behind them.

"How are you doing?" she murmured, her voice pitched very low and soothing. At any other time, he might have taken the opportunity to observe human social techniques in comfort, but his own need was too great to achieve the necessary distance, and he returned her hold with trembling hands.

"Inadequately," he replied.

"What about the painkillers?" she asked, drawing a little to look at him. "Can't the doctor give you anything better or stronger?"

"No," Spock said flatly. "There is nothing else. He can do nothing for the pain."

It said enough that he was willing to admit to such pain, and Nyota brushed the pads of her thumbs over his temples gently. She was walking blind in this - she had no idea what to do to help him. In many ways, she couldn't, and if there were other, more human ways that worked, then she didn't know them.

But she was determined to help, all the same.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" she asked.

"No," Spock said decisively, and took a measured breath.

"Okay," she said, cutting off anything further he had to say. "Okay, then, I'll stay. Let's try and sleep?"

"I..."

"Try?" she urged, still rubbing small circles into his temples with her thumbs. The pressure was strangely soothing, even as his telepathy yearned for her to be able to initiate a meld and soothe his thoughts actively. "At least try?"

"I shall try," he allowed, and let her lead him to the bed - even as he knew that it would not work.

* * *

Jim crept into McCoy's office just as the doctor's shift ended, and they exchanged wan smiles as McCoy checked his messages. When his face tightened, Jim sat up straight again in his chair.

"What is it?"

"Another message from New Vulcan," McCoy muttered darkly. "Another two Vulcans died today."

"Jesus," Jim growled. "If they keep this up, there aren't going to be any Vulcans _left_."

McCoy snorted.

"What about _our _Vulcan?" Jim asked quietly. "How's he doing?"

"Like Hell," McCoy replied. "I've had to take him off the painkillers. They're just going to cause damage if we keep them going. I'm trying to find a substitute but, so far, nothing. They're having exactly the same issue on New Vulcan. They can't dope them up far enough or fast enough to even begin to stabilise them."

"Where is he?"

"In his quarters," McCoy nodded at the console. "I'm keeping a tab on his whereabouts. Things are going to go south pretty soon, and I want to know in advance where the hell I'll be running to."

Jim nodded.

"He also implied, today, that he has to achieve some kind of emotional distance from it, or he'll snap and go under," McCoy added. "Hell, Jim, he needs _time_, and it's the one damn thing his brain isn't going to grant him. Given time, he'll get better, same as anything else. But we've got to keep him alive long enough to even _begin _to improve."

"Bones," Jim held up a hand, cutting off the flow. "Honest, now. Do you think we're in serious danger of Spock _dying _because of this?"

McCoy hesitated, thinking over the whole situation. The rising risk of further aneurysms, the swellings on the brain, the failing telepathy, the emotional trauma, the pain, the shock of the broken bonds...

The sickbay klaxons went off as the computer registered an alert being issued. "Medical emergency in the First Officer's quarters. Medical emergency in..."

"We are now," McCoy snarled, then flew out of his seat and for the doors.

**...and see nothing but your own reflection.**


	3. With Silence

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

**With silence...**

Jim didn't need to do it, but he bolted after McCoy all the time, marvelling at the man's speed. McCoy had never done more than the required fitness training at the Academy - and for medical personnel, that training was much lower than almost any other department. Even navigational officers, who were nicknamed 'office drones' for their lack of need to _move _during their whole careers - got more fitness training than medical staff. But McCoy, while he usually didn't, _could _run.

And when the emergency klaxon went off, he was pelting down the halls, medibag in hand, before Jim had fully registered what was going on.

Training - and general common sense - also included getting out of the _way _when any crewmember in medical blues came haring towards you at breakneck speed. The early hours of Beta Shift were always busy with people going to and from their favoured evening activities, but they parted like the Red Sea for Moses when first McCoy, then their Captain, came ripping through their midst and away again without pausing.

The two of them made record time to Spock's quarters, and McCoy had keyed in the medical override and entered before Jim had quite managed to stop.

And then he kind of wished he hadn't followed.

He went right in, so the doors closed behind him again, and cut off the strangled noises coming from Spock's clenched jaw. He was lying on his bed, stiff as a board, with both hands clutching at his skull as though he wanted to tear away the bone and dig his fingers into his own brain. Jim could see the blood in the low light - thick and dark and glistening - and Uhura sounded very ready to cry.

Which was frightening in itself.

She was bending over him, her hands wrapped around his wrists and - as far as Jim could tell - trying to stop him doing more damage to himself. She was talking to him as well, pleading nonsense, and completely ignored the doctor as he assessed the situation.

"How long?" he asked briskly, the tricorder whining at him unhappily.

"Ten minutes, tops," she breathed, still trying to stop Spock's jerky movements, trying to prise his fingers away. "We...slept a while, and then he woke up crying out, and he just started..."

Spock was speaking, Jim vaguely realised, in Vulcan, though probably actually addressing anyone there.

"What's he saying?" he asked lowly.

Uhura's face crumpled. "It hurts..." she breathed.

Jim felt like a shit for asking.

"Damn it," McCoy muttered, rummaging for a hypo. "I don't want to have to do it, but if he's resorted to harming himself..."

"You can't give him more, can you?" Uhura demanded.

"Not without risks," McCoy said grimly, "but until I can get him coherent and restrained, I haven't got a choice. He's miles stronger than any of us."

The hypo hissed as he applied it to Spock's rigid neck, and although his speech and movements rapidly became sluggish, his tension didn't ease even when he had slipped into unconsciousness.

"How long can you keep him under?" Jim whispered, eyeing the blood with a sick fascination.

"Not long," McCoy shook his head. "I shouldn't have given him that dose as it is, but more will start to give him respiratory problems on top of everything else. I need to find an alternative."

Uhura swallowed. "There's..."

"Nothing," McCoy muttered. "Blasted, god damn telepathy is just...I can't even _touch _it with medication."

She nodded miserably. Jim supposed that her own experience of Vulcans - or at least this Vulcan - would give her a basic understanding of what McCoy meant. And whatever she knew was of no more comfort than the very little that _Jim _knew.

It occurred to him then that Uhura probably knew about the Vulcan suicides. And their...methods.

"McCoy to transporter room, I need a direct transport of myself and Commander Spock from his quarters to Sickbay..."

Jim caught Uhura's elbow and drew her aside, away from the bed, and kept her there until the doctor and the Vulcan were lost in the shimmering glow of the transporter.

"Are you alright?" he asked lowly.

She swiped at her eyes angrily and demanded, "How do you think?"

Jim held up his hands placatingly. "Look, I know you and I don't exactly get along. And believe me, I get it. But right now, this isn't about you and me and our little thing - it's about _him, _and I'm not stupid. I know how much you're involved with him. So this has got to be affecting you."

She hunched her shoulders, and bit her lip.

"I just...I can't..." that lip trembled, and she took a deep breath. "I can't help him. I can't even imagine what he's going through, and I can't do anything but _watch_, like I'm completely _useless_, and..."

"Hey," Jim interrupted, daring to rub over her shoulder soothingly. "Hey, listen. I saw you two in the transporter room, before me and him went over to the _Narada_. I saw that. And I'm hardly an expert on Vulcans, but that wasn't exactly a Vulcan indifferent about everything."

Uhura gave him a watery smile.

"He _loves _you," Jim said gently. "And that's _got _to be helping him. Yeah, he hurts and it shows and he's going to need everything we can give him - but he's got _you_. And that's a start. If..."

He paused, then went on with it all the same.

"If he didn't have you, I don't think he would have requested to come back aboard this ship. Not with me around - I'm hardly his favourite person. He came back because of you, I'm sure of it. And if he hadn't, he be on some other ship, or in San Francisco, or on New Vulcan. And...and you know, as well as I do, that if he were there, then this..." he waved a hand at the bloodstained pillow, "would have happened days ago."

"He'd be already gone," Uhura whispered, her voice cracking as she finished Jim's train of thought.

Jim nodded, and squeezed her shoulder.

"You're not being useless," he said, and acted on his impulse to give her a proper hug.

She didn't bear it long, but long enough to give him a small, trembling smile when they drew apart - and Jim made a mental note to remember that Spock wasn't the only one getting it in the neck because of Nero's insanity.

* * *

Jim dropped by Sickbay the next morning, at a more social hour, some two and a half hours before his own shift began. Unsurprisingly, McCoy was already there working through all the data he had on Vulcans and their new problem, despite his _own _shift not starting for another two and a half hours.

"Any news?" Jim asked, sinking into the chair opposite McCoy's desk.

"Not much," McCoy shrugged. "He's still out - body's exhausted from the lack of sleep, and I've got him on a very mild sedative to try and keep it up as long as possible."

"How's he doing?"

"Restless. Pain indicator's been bitching at me from the second I got him on that biobed. It's starting to take a physical toll as well - temperature's all over the place, muscle cramps from the tension, he's probably going to have a migraine when he wakes up..." McCoy shook his head. "Hell, Jim, this isn't going to be pretty."

"What about his face?"

"Fixed, but I've got him in restraints," McCoy said briskly. "I consulted with M'Benga again this morning. Apparently the Vulcan brain can heal itself - much like ours, but better - and that's what it's trying to do. Problem is, Vulcan healing isn't like ours."

"How?"

"You can't interfere," McCoy said flatly. "Even if they don't go into a trance, they heal _less _effectively when they're on drugs or most medicines. It took centuries longer for Vulcans to develop effective medicine than us, simply because their bodies don't take kindly to it."

"So...it's _all _up to him?" Jim demanded. "You can't help him at all?"

"More or less," McCoy sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "If we can keep him going long enough for his brain to _start _to heal from the trauma - and we're talking physical brain damage here, Jim - then he might make it. We're going to _have _to deal with the emotional backlash later, though I'm hoping Uhura will get him through the grieving process alright. But the brain trauma - the shock, the broken bonds, the telepathy - is the bit that needs to start coming together again."

"Or he's going to die."

McCoy nodded grimly, and Jim swallowed.

"I want you to let Uhura off-duty for a few days," he added sharply.

Jim blinked.

"She's with him now," McCoy jerked his head at the private room. "He calms down a bit - not much, but slightly - when she's with him. Do you know if they're bonded?"

"Wouldn't have thought so," Jim said cautiously, "but it's possible."

McCoy hummed. "Well, she seems to calm him down. Maybe his telepathy recognises her, maybe it's just someone to latch onto. I don't know. I don't even know if that would help. I'm guessing here, Jim. I don't know what's good or bad for him, mentally speaking, and he's in no fit state to tell me."

"Well, if he needs Uhura, he's got her," Jim said decisively. "I'll take her off active duty and put her on paperwork and non-urgent translation for a while. She can do that here if she needs to."

"I appreciate it, Jim."

"Bones, I'm not letting this suck him under," Jim said firmly. "I'll be damned if I lose my First Officer, and quite frankly, I'll be damned if I lose a friend."

McCoy snorted. "Because you two are bosom buddies."

"Maybe not right now, but..." Jim shrugged. "I like the guy well enough. I think we could be great friends. And I'm not letting him die before I get to find out whether I'm right or not."

**...comes suffocation.**


	4. With Quiet

**Notes: Sorry for the delay, but I was having serious problems with my FFN account. It seems to be working again now...finally.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

**With quiet...**

Without the aid of medication, or the ability to even try to give his patient drugs, McCoy was reduced to what amounted to barbaric torture.

He couldn't sedate Spock, because the healing process would slow down or even stop. He couldn't give him painkillers because he was already walking dangerously close to an overdose as it was. And he couldn't numb the area because that just wasn't possible.

So he was reduced to putting the Vulcan in a soundproofed room, restraining him to the bed to prevent him from harming himself...and essentially leaving him to it.

It was barbaric.

McCoy could barely get through his own shifts, knowing what was happening to one of his patients behind that isolation unit door. He took himself off the surgery roster due to his inability to keep his mind off Spock's situation, and his subsequent (and permanent) level of distraction. He worked extra shifts, to prevent the other medical staff being exposed to the screaming every time he opened the unit door.

And oh, God, was there ever screaming.

It had been five days since the emergency call to Spock's quarters, and the screaming had barely abated since. Spock would veer between three extremes: an exhausted sleep, face twitching with the remnants of pain and suffering; silent grimaces, his muscles contorting in agony, as he tried desperately to keep the pain at bay; and hoarse screaming, his throat already torn to shreds.

And his mind fared no better.

The neural scanners went wild every time McCoy brought them near to the Vulcan. His control was in tatters, his shields and processes ripped apart by the cataclysmic disaster of having every bond he possessed torn out of him. The gaping hole in his psyche - where before the muted murmurs of his entire family, his colleagues, any Vulcan he had ever known for more than a brief period of time, had murmured - was setting everything left on fire.

He was hurting, in absolute hellish pain, and couldn't even use his years of Vulcan training to help him. It, too, was horribly damaged - and the longer this went on, the more McCoy worried that the damage was permanent.

There was nothing that McCoy could do.

To make it worse, the Vulcans themselves had never had to deal with anything like this. Losing entire populations of Vulcans was unheard of. The bonds that lurked in the Vulcan mind - usually ignored to the point of being subconscious - numbered tens or even hundreds. Immediate family, extended family, bondmates and siblings and everyone that Vulcans (in their own, strange Vulcan way) considered friends. To lose all of them was unheard of.

For once, it was not Vulcan reticience that was the problem - but lack of knowledge. Even they didn't know what to do.

McCoy resorted to having to treat Spock much like a human patient. When he screamed, he seemed delirious and unaware, but in his quieter moments, he would regain some ability to recognise the people around him. Then, McCoy would allow Lieutenant Uhura to sit with him, or the Captain if Kirk was off-duty. Sometimes, McCoy would visit if the other two were not around, and try to fill the air with meaningless comfort.

It was not against his nature - he was a doctor, after all - but it felt impossibly strange to be performing such a service for Spock, of all people.

The big issue with the visits was the touch telepathy. McCoy didn't know whether it was even safe to touch a Vulcan whose telepathy was so badly out of whack, never mind whether it would help calm and reorder them, or whether it would make everything worse. And from observing Spock, he couldn't tell - any of them touching him when he was screaming or sleeping did nothing. He didn't, it seemed, like to be touched by the doctor or the captain when he was in his quiet, pained moments, but would quiet slightly if Uhura touched him.

Not that Uhura was around much at the moment.

It was taking an emotional toll on her, and McCoy was keeping a close eye on her shift times and meal card data. Unlike certain captains, he could generally trust Uhura to look after herself, but he would be a blind fool not to notice how much she was suffering with her boyfriend's pain. Who wouldn't? Even McCoy felt wrung out and bad about the whole thing, and he certainly didn't carry a torch for the hobgoblin.

He had ordered Uhura to stop coming by every minute of her free time. By the fifth day, she was coming in regular intervals in the morning and afternoon, and would return periodically until Spock was calm enough for McCoy to let her in. She would sit with him for an hour or two - doing what, McCoy didn't know - and then leave for another few hours to calm herself down.

She had come out of the isolation unit in tears more than once, and McCoy couldn't blame her.

Still, he knew that Jim was keeping an eye out for Uhura, and so kept most of his attention on Spock.

Which was just as well - because on the sixth day, Spock took a turn for the...different.

* * *

"Admiral Pike," Jim greeted the face at his personal console with a grim smile. "What can I do for you?"

He recognised that stern visage. Pike wasn't calling for a chat this time. This was business - and by the look on Pike's face, they both knew that Jim wasn't going to like it.

"New orders, Kirk," he said. "You have three more days in orbit around New Vulcan, then you're off for the Yalerannis system. They've been spooked by Nero and want out of the Federation. We both know that can't happen."

The Yalerannis system was made up of four major planets and their native races. Two of them didn't really have much to do with the Federation anyway, and the third could be dropped or kept either way, but the Yalerani themselves were vital. They were expert scientists - within a year of studying something, they would know everything that everybody else knew, and probably more. With Vulcan gone, their scientific prowess was now even more important.

The down side? Leaving New Vulcan.

"Sir, we can't break orbit," Jim said firmly. "We only arrived the day before yesterday; my First Officer is still..."

"Jim," Pike cut him off, and sighed heavily. "I know. I know that Spock still has to be dealing with this..."

"Sure, 'dealing.'"

"...but I can't - and you can't - override these orders for the sake of one man. He's an exceptional officer, Jim, and you and I both take his welfare to heart, but the Federation is at the point of collapsing. You need to get to the Yalerannis system."

"Sir," Jim swallowed, hard. "I don't think you do understand. I have a man dying up here, and that's not a damn bit of exaggeration. I have a man dying that we haven't the slightest idea how to help, and who could crash at any moment. If we go to the Yalerannis system, we'll be well out of range of New Vulcan if that crash does happen, and he'll die. I've got every faith in my medical team, but they can't help him by themselves."

"I know," Pike agreed. "Which is why, if it comes to it, you leave him on New Vulcan."

Jim stared.

"They have hospitals, Jim. They have other sick - hell, they're almost all sick. If you have to, you leave him behind. They can take care of him."

"With all due respect, sir," Jim ground out, "you said it yourself. They have their own sick. You and I both know they're not going to divert the time and attention required to keep my officer alive, not with other, more important," he nearly spat the word, "casualties."

"Well, that's your choice," Pike said. "You go to Yalerannis either way. You leave the Commander on New Vulcan, or you take him with you."

"You're practically ordering me to let my First Officer die!"

"Kirk!" Pike snapped. "I am doing no such thing, but there is nothing else to be done! You have to go - whether or not he goes with you, his chances don't much change."

Jim physically leaned back from the screen in a strange attempt to avoid that truth.

"Jim," Pike's tone softened. "Which one is up to you. But...think of it in these terms. Not in who you'd prefer to save him, but where he'd prefer to die."

Jim swallowed.

"I..."

The communicator beeped, and before Jim could answer, McCoy's voice echoed through his rooms.

"Jim, I need you down in Sickbay as soon as possible. It's Spock. His condition is changing."

Jim barely managed to say goodbye to Pike before he was out of the door - and wondering whether 'changing' really meant 'worse.'

**...comes abandonment.**


	5. With Deserts

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

**With deserts...**

Spock's intellect was unharmed, and he knew, logically, that he could not be where he seemed to be. The rocky outcrops and dying weeds under the blazing sun were gone - all of them, every last one - and would not be returning. And yet, his mind brought him back to the familiar trails and paths. He had walked here ever since he _could _walk, on trips from the family home to learn about his homeworld at the patient tuition of his father and, as a very young child, his paternal grandmother.

Now, the desert splayed out underneath him once more. The injections of rock and pebbles were exactly as he'd remembered, and his eyesight picked out the faint shape of a sehlat prowling across the valley. He sat in his meditative pose at the mountain top; if he had turned, his memory might construct the image of the city of his birth to reassure him.

That was, after all, the purpose of this place.

This mountain top had been his refuge, as a child and as an adult. His happier days had been here, when he was very small - his father, not yet dissatisfied with his progress and his abilities as a true Vulcan, had spent hours instructing him in whatever Spock chose to study that day. His mother had come here too, to stargaze with him, and point out Earth's star and talk about her homeworld. He had first heard music here, played by his grandmother in one of her 'softer' (as Amanda had called them) days.

In the days before he knew that he was different, in the days before he knew that he would _always _be different, in the days when the other children had been accepting of him, and the adults not so convinced of his shortcomings.

It was not the same, entirely - for one, the mountain was exposed to the wind, and the wind had always screeched around the rocks. It had never been so silent in reality, but it was here. There was also no heat - neither was it cool - despite the harsh sunlight, and the faint noise around him was distinctly from the 'real' world. Occasionally, he could even hear his own voice in delirium-fuelled murmurs, before he willed the sound to die again.

He could not bring himself, however, to break the illusion.

It was a lie, of course, but this place did not carry pain. A strange numbness and insensitivity in his limbs and mind, but no pain. His brain was doing its best to protect him from the damage; undoubtedly, he would be scarred and damaged permanently if he were to be exposed to the raw, bleeding wounds in their painful psychic horror.

And so he let his mind do as it desired, and remained where he was.

The sky was an Earth-blue, however, and did not emit winds but voices. They brushed his hair and face, with varying forces and intents, and faded away when he refused to be drawn towards them and respond. The most frequent was a ghost of rough warmth, like rubbing sand between your fingertips, and brought a damp heat like never felt on Vulcan. The other common factor was a cool, light breeze that rubbed through his hair and fingers almost affectionately, before fading. The others came and went too infrequently to truly measure, and he had little desire to do so.

Here, he could rest, at last.

* * *

Uhura came to get McCoy, halfway through her usual afternoon visit, and though she wasn't panicked, McCoy thought she had every right to be when he took a look at Spock's monitors.

"What's he doing?" Uhura asked, clutching at the Vulcan's hand, and McCoy shook his head.

"I'm not sure," he said. He was no expert on Vulcans, but even he could tell that he wasn't witnessing something normal for them. Spock's neural activity was increasing in some areas and not others, and his pain receptors were still howling like they had been for days, but he was silent and, apparently, quite unconscious. His hands were limp, and the restraints slack (for once) around his muscles.

He wasn't doing much of _anything_, and after the chaos of the last week, it was a surprisingly unpleasant change. Mostly because it was frightening.

McCoy sent for the Captain and returned to the isolation unit, leaving the door open behind him now that Spock was quiet and, apparently, quite peaceful. Uhura stayed stock-still as the doctor moved around her, never taking her eyes off Spock's face, and eventually she spoke as the doctor drew a blood sample.

"I can't hear him."

"You can't what?"

"Hear him," Uhura said. "Vulcans are touch-telepaths, and if they let you, you can hear them through their skin. Their...consciousness. I don't know how to explain it - I can't read his thoughts, or even get an impression, but I can...I can hear _him_. Hear his mind _working_."

"And you can't hear him now?"

She shook her head, and McCoy sighed.

"Right," he murmured. "So his telepathy or his mind have shut down, and we don't know which."

Uhura bit her lip - hard.

"I'll need to cross-reference these readings with some of the doctors on New Vulcan," McCoy muttered. "I think it's a healing trance, but this sure as hell isn't what was outlined in the textbooks in xenobiology."

"He's only half..."

"Believe me," McCoy interrupted, "right now, I'm praying it's just the hybrid thing."

She opened her mouth to ask, but was interrupted by Kirk appearing in the doorway, whitefaced and breathing hard as though he'd run all the way.

Which he might well have done.

* * *

When Jim arrived in Sickbay, McCoy and Uhura were in the isolation unit with Spock, the door wide open and the silence unnerving. Jim felt the nervousness travel into his knees and make them twitch unhappily, before he drew into the room himself and saw the reassuring indicators on the biobed monitors.

"What's going on?" he asked brusquely, and Uhura turned a pinched, anxious face to him.

"He's gone into a trance," McCoy said, and shrugged. "At least, I think he has. The readings aren't quite right, though."

"How much 'not right'?"

McCoy sighed, and jabbed a finger at the monitors. "The neural activity is too obvious and in the wrong regions. The dopamine levels are nowhere near what they need to be. And he's not registering us all the time, which he _should _be."

Uhura, Jim noted, was absently rubbing her fingers over Spock's sleeve. Careful not to touch him, but also unable to keep her hands away. He couldn't blame her.

"What's this mean?" he asked flatly, folding his arms.

"Hell if I know," McCoy muttered angrily. "If it's a trance, then things are looking up. He's not in pain anymore, which is definitely a plus. But, Jim, these readings _aren't right_. And a healing trance is one of the most basic functions the Vulcan brain possesses."

Uhura's other hand rose to clutch at her mouth, and she closed her eyes. Jim got the feeling that she'd already been told, and didn't want to hear it again.

"I think we might be looking at brain damage, Jim," McCoy said.

* * *

The sandstorm was rising out of the east, and whirling across the evening desert view like a cruel goddess from ancient times. Spock watched it approach, knowing the danger and not bringing himself to either care or move out of the path of destruction. It could not hurt as much as the agony in his own head ever since Vulcan imploded, and he could muster the energy to preserve his own existence.

In oblivion, there was surely more peace than he held here.

His mother was gone, because he was too slow to catch her. His home was gone, because of wrong decisions that could have been avoided. His girlfriend was undoubtedly now guilted into being with him even if it was not her desire, and Spock had known of her doubts in the wisdom of courting a Vulcan for a long time. His father was as he'd always been, and would undoubtedly become more difficult to deal with in the absence of the buffer zone that had been the Lady Amanda. His Captain held a wary respect for him at the absolute maximum, and the ship's doctor would be glad to see the threat to his best friend gone.

Why, then, muster the energy to move?

The storm hit, and the pain snapped back into place accompanied by the winds - the cool one screaming now, and beating at his face and ears, and the rough one scraping along his skin and tearing him raw.

And yet, the pain was different, somehow, rising up through his chest and throat, pushing at his veins, pulling him from the inside out and crushing his ribs between the weight of the agony in his chest and the weight of the planet outside him - being buried alive in the sands of Vulcan, in the sands of a place that no longer existed, with the voices of the people he barely knew in his ears, and the burn of the pain in his throat like the frustration of his childhood...

It seemed such a fitting way to go.

**...come sandstorms.**


End file.
